Carmody's Run

by Bill Pronzini

  As he pulled onto the parking area, a short, wiry man wearing a sports shirt and knife-crease slacks came walking through the gate. The man took several steps toward the Citröen, then stopped when he heard the sound of the Mercedes’ engine. His head turned out of profile; sunlight limned his sharp-featured face.

  Jose’ Alvarez.

  Carmody’s lips pulled in against his teeth in a wolfish grimace. He slid his foot off the brake and onto the accelerator, spinning the wheel, the Mercedes responded into a long, slewing arc that cut Alvarez off from the Citröen. Startled, Alvarez stood frozen a few seconds longer—until he could see into the Mercedes well enough to recognize Carmody. His expression of surprise turned into one of terror. He threw a wild look over his shoulder, saw that the gate was too far away, and broke into a spindle-legged run toward the edge of the cliff. When he got there he sidestepped one of the abutments, disappeared beyond the rim.

  Carmody had the door open before he brought the Mercedes to a full stop. He jerked on the emergency brake and came out running. When he reached the edge he saw that a steep, sandy path wound down the cliff wall to a narrow private beach. Alvarez was scrambling down the path, using his hands on juts of cliff rock to keep his balance.

  Carmody’s eyes glittered. The longshot had come in, the first one he’d played for a lucky change—and the payoff was going to be better than he’d expected, too.

  He glanced at the palacio but no one else was in sight. With the Beretta drawn, he went down the path at a skidding run. Immediately he began to gain on the Spaniard: Alvarez’s fear was making him clumsy and swivel-necked. He was three-quarters of the way down when Alvarez reached the bottom and jumped the last five feet and fell sprawling onto the rocky sand. Alvarez got his legs under him, ran toward the far cliff wall. But there was nowhere for him to go. The beach was bounded on three sides by the bluff wall and on the other by the Mediterranean. He came to the end of the beach as Carmody reached the path’s end; stopped, turned, rolled his eyes in all directions, and then took three steps toward the sea as if he were thinking of trying to swim for it.

  Carmody shouted, “Stay out of the water, Alvarez, or I’ll blow your fucking head off!”

  Alvarez made an unintelligible sound that carried across the stillness. In little crablike steps he backed away from the water, diagonally toward the cliff wall, as Carmody approached him in long, hard strides. When his spine touched the wall he stopped and stood with his hands braced against the rock on either side, his face gray and wet and miserable.

  Without slowing Carmody went up to him and slapped him across the face, forehand and backhand, twice. Alvarez fell to his knees, knelt in the pebbled sand with his arms extended, palms outward. “Señor, por favor, no me matar, Madre de Dios no me matar!” His voice was a shrill, liquid whine.

  Carmody wrapped fingers in the front of the man’s shirt, hauled him to his feet, shoved him back against the cliff. He pressed the Beretta’s muzzle against the quivering jaw, held it there. “Talk to me, Alvarez:’ he said, “and maybe I won’t kill you. Tell me things.”

  “Sí, sí, sí, sí!”

  “We’ll start with Miralles. Who is he?”

  “Un hombre de negocios jubilado,” Alvarez said. Sweat rolled thickly along his cheeks. “Muy poderoso...”

  “In English, José, so I’ll be sure to understand”

  “A retired businessman, a powerful and important man —a bad man.”

  “Yes? Why would this bad man want to play games with me?”

  “The diamonds...

  “What diamonds? Not the synthetics Riuyken gave the girl.”

  “No, no, real diamonds, fine diamonds worth more than twenty million pesetas.”

  Carmody stared at him. That was better than three hundred thousand dollars, American. He said, “Hot ice?”

  Alvarez started to shake his head, thought better of the movement with the gun tight against his jaw. “These... these diamonds are the property of Miralles, he is a collector of diamonds, it is said he is obsessed with them, values them above all else.”

  Carmody said, “How do these stones tie up with me?”

  “They were stolen by a man named Fanning, employed by Miralles as a secretary.”

  “Yes? Keep talking.”

  Alvarez said, “Five days ago, Fanning telephoned me. He said he wished to be put in contact with you, that he wished to arrange for your professional services. I believed at first he was calling for Miralles.”

  “How did Fanning know you?”

  “I have supplied Miralles with women—he gives many parties and his guests sometimes desire company. I would make the arrangements with Fanning.”

  “All right. And how did he know about me?”

  “Your reputation. Fanning was close to Miralles, and to the friends of Miralles... a chance remark, an overheard conversation... you see?”

  “I’m beginning to,” Carmody said.

  “When I asked Fanning to explain why he wished your services, he said it was to see to the safe transportation of two persons and something of great value to a distant place. I told him that you would want to know the details, but he was evasive. He would tell you and only you, he said. There was one other condition—that his meeting with you would be at a place of his choosing. I was not to contact him for any reason; he would call again to learn if the terms were acceptable to you.”

  “But you never did call me, did you. Why?”

  “I was suspicious of Fanning’s motives,” Alvarez said. “And your instructions to me, Señor Carmody... always to be most careful with potential clients, no es verdad?”

  “So you decided to talk to Miralles personally?”

  “Sí. Yes. He was very upset. He demanded to know where Fanning was but of course I couldn’t tell him.”

  “Disappeared with the diamonds,” Carmody said.

  “Yes. Miralles said I must help him find Fanning, and when I refused he threatened me, he—”

  “...offered you money.”

  Alvarez said plaintively, “I had no choice but to do his bidding. Miralles is a bad man, a very bad and powerful man.”

  “You already said that, Jose.”

  “Señor Carmody, I swear this, I did not think then that you would ever be involved.”

  “Get on with your story.”

  Alvarez drew a ragged breath, let it out with a sound like a snake hissing. “Miralles instructed me to tell Fanning you had agreed to meet with him—but that you would name the place of this meeting. Fanning would not agree. He was afraid of a trap. He said the only meeting place acceptable to him was your villa.”

  “He knew where I lived?”

  “Somehow he had found out. He also knew he could not approach you directly, without first going through me or another of your contacts. That you would not see him if he tried. When I spoke again with Miralles he said we must do as Fanning wished–it was the only way to bring Fanning and the diamonds into the open quickly. So we must arrange for you to be drawn away from Majorca so your villa could be used.”

  Carmody said thinly, “By sending somebody to break in and then to impersonate me, is that it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who? Not Miralles himself?”

  “No. An agent... I do not know who. Señor Carmody, I begged Miralles to reconsider. But he would not. He knew you could not be paid to betray Fanning, to allow your home to be used in such a fashion. And he... he did not dare to risk any other means of dealing with you.”

  “Killing me or kidnapping me, you mean.”

  “I would not allow that, señor. You must believe me. If Miralles had insisted upon such measures I would have defied him, I would have contacted you immediately—”

  “Sure you would have, Jose.”

  “He assured me you would not be harmed. A simple ruse to take you to Amsterdam for two days, you would be well paid, and when you returned all at your villa would be as you had left it. You would never know the truth.”

  “Exc
ept that Jorge Riuyken couldn’t or wouldn’t raise enough money to make the Amsterdam payoff look good and made the big mistake of pulling a gun on me and locking me in a closet. That mistake is going to cost everybody concerned, one way or another.”

  “A. fool, Riuyken, an arrogant fool—.”

  “A dead fool, now:’ Carmody said.

  Alvarez rolled his eyes upward, saw that Carmody meant it, and began to shake. He muttered something in Spanish that might have been a prayer.

  “How was Fanning set up?” Carmody asked him. “Give me the details.”

  “Señor Carmody, please, please. . .

  Carmody shut that off with pressure from the Beretta. “The details, José.”

  They came out of Alvarez in fits and starts. Riuyken had contacted Gillian–Alvarez didn’t know how he’d gotten her name–and once she agreed, he’d called Miralles and Miralles had called Alvarez. Alvarez set up the Saturday meet between Carmody and Gillian—and when Fanning got in touch with him again, he’d stalled him until Saturday afternoon to make sure the girl was successful in getting Carmody to Amsterdam. Then, on Fanning’s next call, Alvarez had tried to arrange the trap at Carmody’s villa for Sunday; but Fanning wanted it on Monday morning instead, so they’d had to keep Carmody and Gillian hanging an extra day in Amsterdam.

  Carmody said, “What happened yesterday at my villa?”

  “I do not know, I did not ask”

  “Did they kill Fanning at my villa?”

  “Señor, I swear I don’t know—”

  “No, you little shit, you wouldn’t want to know, would you? But Miralles knows, by God. Where is he? Up there in his palacio?”

  “No. No, he went away.”

  “Went where?”

  “To Majorca.”

  “Why?”

  “I do not know;” Alvarez said. “I spoke with one of his servants -there is no one at the palacio but servants. He said Miralles was upset. He didn’t know why.”

  “Something to do with Fanning and the diamonds?”

  “Perhaps, but I don’t—”

  “Don’t know, yeah. Does he have a house on the island?”

  “I have never heard one mentioned.”

  “Where does he usually stay? Which hotel?”

  “I have no idea, I swear—”

  “When did he leave here?”

  “This afternoon, two hours ago.”

  “Why did you come out here, José Why did you leave Barcelona?”

  “Señor Carmody, you must believe me, I did not want to become involved in this treachery, I did not wish to betray you, but I had no choice. Miralles gave me no choice. He is a bad man, a bad man, he would have killed me as he would a fly. I came for the money I was promised, I am going to Portugal, I knew you would blame me and come looking for me and I was afraid.”

  Alvarez kept on babbling, pleading, but Carmody had quit listening. He was thinking about Miralles, about the setup. If the agent he’d sent to the villa had met Fanning and gotten the diamonds, then disposed of Fanning, why had Miralles gone to Majorca today? To pick up his diamonds? Maybe—but why wouldn’t he have just had them delivered by the agent? And why had he been upset when he’d left? A man obsessed with diamonds wouldn’t be upset if he’d just recovered twenty million pesetas’ worth stolen from his collection. Maybe something had gone wrong, then; maybe the diamonds hadn’t been recovered, or Fanning was still on the loose, or both.

  Alvarez said piteously, “Please, Señor Carmody, you will not kill me? I was forced to betray you, I was forced. Please, I beg of you—”

  “Begging is the way you’ll eat from now on,” Carmody told him flatly, “if I have anything to say about it. You’re through in my business, in Spain and Portugal both; I’ll see to that. In six months you’ll be pimping for five-dollar whores in the Lisbon slums.”

  He took the Beretta away from Alvarez’s jaw, caught him by the ear, and wrenched him to his knees. Alvarez screamed, clapped both hands to the side of his head, cradling his injured ear. Carmody went away along the beach without looking back.

  TUESDAY, LATE AFTERNOON–MIRALLES

  Carlos Miralles was a rich and powerful man because in his youth, during Spain’s bloody Civil War, he had been a Socialist, a terrorist, a murderer, and a thief.

  When King Alfonso was formally outlawed near the end of 1931, and Spain became a republic, Miralles had been twenty years old and, like many of his generation, a left-wing political zealot. He took part in the burning of churches and convents in his native Malaga, and with equal fervor denounced the Monarchists and President Zamora of the new central-right regime; later, after the 1933 general elections which swept the Popular Front into power, he became a member of the militant, extreme-left paramilitary formation that was being openly trained at the time. And at the outbreak of war in July of 1936, while Franco directed the uprising in Spanish Morocco and other insurgents fostered attacks in Madrid, Seville, Burgos, and Saragossa, Miralles was instrumental in the insurrection that made a bloodbath of Malaga.

  By then he had risen to the rank of lieutenant and he led much of the street fighting against the Falangists and the Loyalists. He ordered the massacre of prisoners, guided bands of armed terrorists that entered private homes and slaughtered Loyalist sympathizers. It was a source of pride to him that he had personally shot and then decapitated six men in the name of Franco’s newly organized Rebel government, the Junta de Nacional.

  Malaga fell to the Rebels in February of 1937. Although large numbers of his fellow officers—Miralles was then a captain—left shortly after the victory to join Franco’s siege on Madrid, he remained in the city by choice and manipulation He had absolute authority there, his first taste of power. But the main reason he stayed was greed.

  Miralles had been born into poverty, had joined the Socialists for this reason, had fought in the beginning for this reason The hunger in his belly had long since been appeased, but the hunger in his soul for wealth and greater stature burned hot. There in Malaga, in mid-1937, he saw his opportunity to prepare for a luxurious post-war future. And he seized it

  Most of Spain’s wealthy were supporters of the Rebels, or Nationalists as they were later called; but many influential families in and around Malaga had been or secretly still were Loyalists, and the spoils of war were available for the taking. Miralles embarked on a campaign of terrorism to ferret out suspected Loyalists -condemning them to death while he privately looted their valuables. Even this was not enough to satisfy him. On one occasion he murdered a German military adviser who had confided that he owned a priceless gold urn. On another occasion he denounced a confirmed Nationalist as a Republican, had him shot, and then stole two valuable paintings from the man’s home. He had no religion, he had no conscience; the prosperity of Carlos Miralles was all that mattered to him.

  In December of 1938, Franco launched a heavy offensive against the republic and within a month Barcelona had fallen and the Republican armies began to disintegrate. Three months later, when Franco marched victoriously into Madrid, the Civil War was over. More than a million Spaniards had died, Spain lay ravaged and desolate—and Carlos Miralles had assembled a fortune stained with the blood of his countrymen.

  As an acclaimed hero of the insurrection, he was offered a political post in Franco’s reconstruction program. He accepted, and over the next seven years, from beginning to end of World War II, he dedicated himself to the rebuilding of Malaga and its neighboring towns -and to furthering his own cause. He used his political position in Jekyll and Hyde fashion: instituting programs for the good of the people, supervising reconstruction projects; intimidating, threatening, and in one case killing to fatten his private horde. But he was only biding his time. This war would end too, eventually, and for his purpose it did not matter whether the Axis or the Allies emerged the victor. He had evolved a plan that would transform him from a well-to-do provincial politician into the wealthy giant of his dreams.

  Early in 1945, with the defeat of the Axis
a certainty, he began making private preparations for the establishment of his own import-export firm. With his political connections, he had no difficulty arranging to buy up the export rights to various types of leather goods. When peace came to Europe the following year, he resigned his government post and entered the business world.

  His intention had not been to realize large capital gains from leather exports, but to use his company as a front for the secret distribution of artwork and other war spoils to America, South America, and the rebuilding countries of Europe. His storehouse was exhausted in two years–but by then he had also acquired a Midas touch in the business world. In the booming postwar market, his company’s profits quickly doubled, tripled, quadrupled, until by 1951 it became one of the largest exporters in Spain.

  Miralles ran the firm with an iron hand, seeking ever larger profits, until a developing heart condition forced him to retire in 1962. By then he had forgotten forever poverty and Socialism; had built his massive palacio outside Torremolinos and filled it with legitimately purchased works of art, beautiful mistresses, a large staff of servants.

  And diamonds. Above all else, diamonds.

  He had first discovered the gem during the Civil War, when he was looting the Loyalist rich of Malaga. Immediately, they became for him a symbol of wealth and power. He found that he could stare at a diamond, fascinated, for hours at a time; and that the feel of one was more exciting than the skin of a naked woman. Diamonds were never cold to Carlos Miralles; they were hot, hot, and the pain of their heat was the sweet pain of orgasm.